Rugby: Lions coach Warren Gatland not afraid to lose to win series

Warren Gatland approached the Lions job interview telling himself, "I don't think I can lose."

He explains: "Being offered it would be fantastic, a great honour, and if they didn't offer it to me I could say - thank god, I've just dodged a bullet. That's how tough it is." He is joking. Probably.

The "toughness" of a Lions tour to New Zealand was spelt out to the head coach before the plane had left the tarmac. First, Eddie Jones, the England coach, said: "I think they've picked a certain style of team based on the influence of the Welsh coaches, so I think they're looking to attack like Wales with big gain-line runners, with not much ball movement, and I think you struggle to beat the All Blacks like that."

On the same, pre-flight weekend, Shane Horgan, the former Ireland wing and centre, was telling his Sunday Times readers: "I'm not sure Gatland has the playbook and flexibility for this challenge. In fact, I would be more confident if any of the other three home nation coaches were in charge. So I ask myself: is Gatland the weakest link on the tour?"

Nice send-off. The "bullet" Gatland talked about was meant to be New Zealand's brilliance, which is accentuated on their own shores. And he was already bracing himself for a propaganda war when the squad arrive. Rugby, though, is a sport for straight-talkers, so Gatland will not have been shocked to see so many barbed wire bouquets on the London runway.

When we spoke, he was certainly monitoring the hostility in New Zealand and volunteering himself as a lightning rod to protect his players (Kiwi coach comes home to plot against his own kin - that kind of thing). "They've already been quite spiky. I've found that quite interesting," he said. "They're already the ones that have subtly started a couple of things, put a few things out there. It hasn't come from the English or Irish media.

"There's a potential that we'll have to deal with that at some stage. Sometimes [there's a case for] putting the focus on yourself for a week to take the heat off the players and let them focus and relax, because that way people in the media aren't talking about them and their match-ups, their strengths and weaknesses. You've got to be prepared to do that. Or get involved in other aspects, to put that focus on yourself."

Gatland is no slouch himself at the mischief game, and a question about New Zealand's potential vulnerabilities on the tour, which starts on Saturday, is enthusiastically received. "You see how well their Super Rugby sides are going," he starts out. "They're playing phenomenally well. Like everyone, though, I think there are two or three positions where they don't want to pick up too many injuries. Second row looks the one for me, in terms of [Brodie] Retallick and [Sam] Whitelock being pretty important to them. Ben Smith is carrying an injury. Kieran Read. It'd be interesting if they lost Beauden Barrett. But if they do lose someone they seem to have this conveyor belt of players who come out of nowhere.

"It's obvious that in the first five games you're not going to show everything, you're not going to show your hand," he said. "But given the limited time together you can't allow things to knock you off course. What I've learned on past tours is that the whole thing is about a test series. The warm-up games and lead-up games are for the test series. Yes you want to perform well, but if you drop a game because you're trying something then it's not the end of the world. The important thing is not to get hung-up about those things."